Top 5 ways businesses can become greener

Making your business more eco-friendly can bring some great benefits; as well as helping the environment, you’re also likely to save money. There are lots of ways in which to go green – read on for our top tips.

1) Go paperless

If you’re getting tired of dealing with huge piles of paper files and making the effort to store them every time you or your staff have finished with them, going paperless is the solution for you. You’ll save a significant amount of space that would otherwise be filled with documents, and you’ll also reduce waste to boot.

Some of the ways in which you can start minimising your reliance on paper include implementing a policy that encourages employees to email files to each other or transfer them via branded USB memory sticks rather than print them out, and electronically store documents in the cloud or on shared server space instead of in filing cabinets.

2) Get energy efficient

Business energy consumption can be alarmingly high – consider the cost of running multiple PCs, having the lights and heating/air conditioning on all day, operating company cars, and offering kitchen facilities for your staff, and you’ll soon realise that you ‘re using more electricity than you should.

Ways to reduce energy usage include installing lights with motion sensors, so they only come on when someone is nearby, as well as asking staff to turn off their PCs and/or monitors at the end of each day, so they don’t keep running overnight or over weekends. It’s also worth turning off the air conditioning or heating altogether when cold or hot air isn’t really needed and, when heating is required, turning down the thermostat if it’s set above 21 degrees C.

3) Reuse and recycle

Reducing waste is a great way to become greener – and it’s also easy if you know how. One popular practice involves placing recycling bins around your office for different types of recyclable rubbish, such as plastic, cardboard and paper, and arranging for your waste handling company to empty them on a regular basis. Ensure your staff know where to go to deposit specific kinds of recyclable waste and consider reducing the number of ‘normal’ bins dotted around the workplace to make employees think twice about where they should go with their rubbish.

You should also establish a policy encouraging employees to reuse whatever they see as waste where possible, rather than throwing it away. As an example, unwanted folders and mostly empty notebooks can easily be given new life simply by sticking new labels over old ones and ripping out used pages, respectively.

The business benefits of going green

If all of this sounds like more hassle than it’s worth, consider the stats relating to the benefits of going green for businesses of all sizes: